Expert Advice & Talks

Judith Wester BASc, MPhil, PhD is a highly qualified death studies expert who has delivered informative and entertaining talks to a wide variety of audiences that include community and charity groups, university and college staff/students, medical and professional groups, police, companies and human resource organisations. She is also called upon to speak on the radio regarding concerns or discussions around death and loss and speak at academic and non-academic conferences. (To listen to Dr Wester speak go to CEDAR News, BBC Radio).

She has organised fun and inventive Death Cafés with young people and older adults; worked with artists on their installations or performance art; and delivered inventive discussions to philosophy and science groups that include:

Imagining Death through Medusa’s eyes

A history of death through myth and time

Shadow Boxing: stories from post war physicians

Dr Wester is a thanatologist and academic who has committed herself to transferring contemporary research on death, dying and bereavement into language everyone can understand. She has taught at college, university and community levels, believing everyone from young to old can benefit from death education. Her vast experience includes working with home-care hospice, children’s hospital, and developing Death Studies programmes in higher education.

She also trained and worked as an HIV hot-line crisis counsellor. As a trustee and vice chair for a mental health charity, she became certified in suicide prevention in 2010. She is the founder and Director of CEDAR CIC and is currently on the steering committee of LGBT SAND (Safe Ageing—No Discrimination), which addresses the needs of vulnerable elderly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people at end of life. Dr Wester’s enthusiasm for empowering people through education can be contagious.

For information on how to book Dr Wester for your event or have her consult with you regarding your own death education programmes and events, you can contact us by completing the form and use the subject line: Dr Wester – Talk or Dr Wester-Consult. You may also write to: info@cedareducation.org.uk.

CEDAR Education

CEDAR Education is dedicated to teaching everyone how to understand, accept and respond to death, dying and loss in healthy and appropriate ways with clients, patients, students, and in personal relationships.